Weaver on her amazing comeback
Weaver confounds expectations after catastrophic collision
Molly Weaver has embarked upon the Giro Rosa less than six months after a collision with a car that doctors said would have killed most people. The British rider fell out of the Italian race with a puncture on stage three, but getting that far was in itself an achievement.
The Team Sunweb rider broke five vertebrae, crushed her chest, back, shoulder and four ribs when she hit a car on a training ride near her home in Girona, Spain, in February.
“I was at my peak. From what the doctor said, I’d have died if I hadn’t been as fit — if I’d not had as much muscle mass, and I’d not been as healthy. The impact would normally kill you,” she said.
Despite having no memory of the incident, she now knows what happened: “I was descending a very gradual descent. I was going towards a bend — and he [the driver] was coming out of the bend.
“He was going just a bit too fast and overshot onto my side of the road and then we hit head-on. I hit his windscreen on the left side, so it was just a case of he was going too fast, it was a tight bend on a mountainous descent, he goes over the white line, and I hit him.”
The extensive injuries meant she wasn’t expected to ride a bike all year but she was on the rollers wearing a back brace within two months.
“When it first happened they said I wouldn’t cycle all year; even the team thought that was it. But I knew that wouldn’t be the scenario, it was just a case of when [I’d be back on the bike],” she said.
Weaver wore a back brace for two months, and she only got into the swing of four-hour endurance rides a month ago.
“Three weeks ago, I celebrated being able to do hard sessions back to back — before that I would do one day, and I couldn’t do the next day. I’d lost all my core strength too. After two months in a brace, I couldn’t even hold myself to sit up at first.
“The team doctors have been invaluable. Having this massive team, with the men’s and women’s staff team combined has made an immense difference. It meant I could be completely confident [I was making the right choices in recovery].”